Career Jude B Strikerless 1k & Ashley Smog 1k

[smoggy90]

Hi all, after really enjoying my Adama Traore one season strikerless challenge I thought I would attempt a 1k strikerless career. 
First of all my club choice is a team heavily reliant on one striker and who are currently really struggling without him.

I always had a soft spot for Spurs since the Gazza, Lineker days and they have a good core group of players to work with and a nice new stadium to play in. Daniel Levy even gave us a nice transfer kitty of £102m to spend!

As you may have guessed from the title our man for this challenge is Jude Bellingham, the much coveted young midfielder from Birmingham City. Teams such as Man Utd and Dortmund have been linked with him already so it’s only a matter of time before he moves on, however in FMM world £17m later and he was ours.

Coupled with this I am going to go for a strikerless triple threat as well and also try and get one of these players on the assists leaderboard.

£19.75m was spent on this guy from Celtic.

And then a whopping £82m on this guy from Dortmund who needs no introductions.

So there’s our players revealed, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Bellingham and Dembele develop in particular. I will get our first season posted hopefully this weekend.

Thanks for reading. 

Edited November 16, 2020 by smoggy90

[Mr Tree]

Hey Jude is the song the bees run out to, and Bellingham looked bloody excellent when we played them a few weeks ago - ok, you've got me hooked pal! Good luck, look forward to hearing your progress!

[BatiGoal]

Hope you're mentally ready for the long journey ahead 😀 looks fun tho these strikerless challenges. Nice set of players and let's see how long it'll take you to get the INT job 😉 

[Rob]

Woohoo! Good luck mate.

[Ian]

I don’t really know much about Jude so it’ll be interesting seeing how he develops. Good luck. 

[Titjes]

Good luck mate, great player choices 😉

[Kanegan]

Great player choices mate. 

Best of luck. 

[Kun Aguero]

Used Karamoko Dembele quite a few times, and he always turned out into a class player just like all the other Dembele's. Good luck mate.

[Woody]

i planned on using Bellingham for a 100 challenge...best of luck mate

[smoggy90]

3 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Hey Jude is the song the bees run out to, and Bellingham looked bloody excellent when we played them a few weeks ago - ok, you've got me hooked pal! Good luck, look forward to hearing your progress!

 

3 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Hope you're mentally ready for the long journey ahead 😀 looks fun tho these strikerless challenges. Nice set of players and let's see how long it'll take you to get the INT job 😉 

 

1 hour ago, Rob said:

Woohoo! Good luck mate.

 

1 hour ago, Titjes said:

Good luck mate, great player choices 😉

 

1 hour ago, Ian said:

I don’t really know much about Jude so it’ll be interesting seeing how he develops. Good luck. 

 

1 hour ago, Kanegan said:

Great player choices mate. 

Best of luck. 

 

1 hour ago, Kun Aguero said:

Used Karamoko Dembele quite a few times, and he always turned out into a class player just like all the other Dembele's. Good luck mate.

 

1 hour ago, Woody said:

i planned on using Bellingham for a 100 challenge...best of luck mate

Thanks all. 
 

Funny you mention the INT job BG as England had a terrible run and missed out on the Euros.

 

My application went in......

 

......but sadly they gave the job to Stevie G. The international job will have to wait for another day. 

[smoggy90]

Season 1

So first things first in this career we had to do a bit of dealing in the market as our original budget wasn't quite enough. We therefore sold Alderweireld, Davies, Foyth, Lamela and Wanyama which helped us bring in our 3 main players plus a few extras. Unai Simon came in as a long term replacement for Lloris, Marco Kana who i know turns into a quality midfielder and Ebere Eze who i liked for his versatility across numerous positions.

Spoiler

 

The season was a great success;

• We won the league with 105 points 
• We won the FA Cup beating Chelsea 2-1 in the final.
• We lost in the League Cup Semi Final over two legs to Man Utd.
• We lost in the CL Semi Final to Napoli, again over two legs.

Spoiler

 

Our players started developing very nicely with good attribute increases across the board. Sancho was already an England international but Dembele got capped in this first season and Bellingham has been tipped for a call up. As you can see from my previous post England had a terrible season and Southgate got the sack, unfortunately though the FA chose Steven Gerrard as the new national manager so i will have to wait for that one to come up again in the future.

Spoiler

 

To the most important bit now and their performances on the pitch;

• Bellingham scored 40 goals and got 10 assists in 44 games. A very solid return for a 16 year old, he needed resting regularly and had a two week lay off with injury hence only playing 44 out of our 61 games but i'm very happy with this as a start.
• Sancho was our main creator with 25 assists and he added 9 goals.
• Dembele has less of an impact with 10 goals and 12 assists but plenty of time for him.
• They made it a 1, 2, 3 for the Young Player of the Year Award.

Spoiler

 

So that puts us on 40/1000 for Bellingham's 1k attempt and 59/1500 for the triple threat attempt.

A reasonable start to get us going and hopefully plenty more to come.

Thanks for reading.

[Mr Tree]

Ha, very nice work with the award clean sweep!

[Kanegan]

Good start mate. Sancho looks like he will be getting the bulk of assists in this career.

[BatiGoal]

Crazy improvements for the guys, especially Dembélé Crossing and Shooting +4, and Movement +5 among others. Very nice. Is that on regular training? 

Great start, Smøg!

[Woody]

Lads look excellent Smog and a solid start to boot. 👍

[Rob]

Excellent start. Well done.

[smoggy90]

6 hours ago, Mr Tree said:

Ha, very nice work with the award clean sweep!

 

5 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Good start mate. Sancho looks like he will be getting the bulk of assists in this career.

Thanks both. 

5 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Crazy improvements for the guys, especially Dembélé Crossing and Shooting +4, and Movement +5 among others. Very nice. Is that on regular training? 

Great start, Smøg!

Thanks BG and yeah just regular training, not intensive. I try switching their focus every quarter and they are rapidly improving. Spurs have state of the art facilities and gold coaches from the off so maybe that helps. 

4 hours ago, Woody said:

Lads look excellent Smog and a solid start to boot. 👍

 

4 hours ago, Rob said:

Excellent start. Well done.

Thank you guys. 

[Kun Aguero]

Great first season getting 40 goals from a 16 years old.

Scoring the goals will be the easy part, while keeping Sancho happy will probably be the toughest part, this guy have the "Very Ambitious" mentality, always asking for a new contract.

[smoggy90]

7 hours ago, Kun Aguero said:

Great first season getting 40 goals from a 16 years old.

Scoring the goals will be the easy part, while keeping Sancho happy will probably be the toughest part, this guy have the "Very Ambitious" mentality, always asking for a new contract.

Thanks mate, and yes i have already encountered a few problems with Sancho which you will see over the next few updates. Difficult character to manage!

[smoggy90]

Season 2

Coming into season 2 i wanted to strengthen the flanks and i wanted a couple of left footed defenders. The defenders i went for were Maximillian Wober and Nathan Ake (a steal at £16.75m), on the flanks i got in Ben Chilwell and Serginio Dest who are both capable of covering all positions up either side. This is with a view to adopting a slightly unusual looking formation i have been testing and i was aiming to start utilising this season. We also brought in a quality central midfielder in Tonali.

These transfers in were financed by the £164m sale of Eriksen to Milan, an offer too good to turn down and the sale of a few other fringe players.

Spoiler

 

The season went ok but could be better;

• We won the league with 90 points but conceded a lot more goals due to the new formation. However the main thing is we scored plenty more, a total of 168 goals compared to 125 in the first season.
• We won the FA Cup beating West Ham 3-1 in the final.
• We lost in the League Cup Final to Man City.
• We lost in the CL Final, again to Napoli.
• We lost in the Community Shield to Liverpool.
• We are part way through the Club World Cup which were a nice few bonus games at the end of the season.

Spoiler

 

Our players again developing pretty rapidly and starting to look like genuine world class contenders, Sancho probably already at that level. We also cleaned up again at the end of season awards.

Spoiler

 

Increase in attributes and their maturing years, coupled with a tweak to tactics resulted in a significant improvement in their performances on the pitch;

• Bellingham scored 65 goals and got 13 assists in 52 games. A big jump in goals and aided slightly by the increase in games with the WCC etc.
• Sancho was again our main creator with 32 assists and he added 15 goals.
• Dembele a massive improvement with 16 goals and 26 assists.

Spoiler

 

That takes Bellingham over 100 goals so a great start for him and 155 goals towards the TT. I'm expecting to stay around and about these levels for the next few seasons and hopefully nab that Engalnd job at some point to give these numbers a boost.

Thanks for reading. 

Edited March 20, 2020 by smoggy90

[Kanegan]

Another great season from Bellingham. Really racking up the goals at the moment.

[BatiGoal]

Already on 100+ gls with the 1K man 👍 both challenges well on track! 

[Rob]

Destroying it. KIU! 

[Cockers2505]

Looking very good @smoggy90 nice choice of players to help aid you with this challenge 👏

[Ian]

He’s smashing it and you can see he’s going to develop into a truly unstoppable machine.

[smoggy90]

11 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Another great season from Bellingham. Really racking up the goals at the moment.

 

11 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Already on 100+ gls with the 1K man 👍 both challenges well on track! 

 

9 hours ago, Rob said:

Destroying it. KIU! 

 

8 hours ago, Cockers2505 said:

Looking very good @smoggy90 nice choice of players to help aid you with this challenge 👏

 

1 hour ago, Ian said:

He’s smashing it and you can see he’s going to develop into a truly unstoppable machine.

thanks all, appreciate the comments. Season 3 is finished just need to find the time to post, hopefully in the next few days. 

[smoggy90]

Hi all, bit later than planned but here is my season 3 update.

Main transfer news was the sale of Harry Kane for £160m to Barca. I had tried to sell him since day 1 of this career but only received pathetic offers, so as soon as this offer came in it was time to go. Few other minor sales and the incomings were young prospects picked up from the scouting agency. Not sure if anyone else uses this but set it to worldwide and youth rankings always throws up better prospects than my scouts seem to!

Spoiler

 

The season went well but still no perfect haul;

• We won the league with 101 points and managed to tighten up at the back conceding just 19 goals.
• We lost in the Community Shield to Man City.
• We lost in the FA Cup 5th round to Liverpool 1-0.
• We won the League Cup Final against Newcastle.
• We played Napoli yet again in the CL, and this time managed to beat them!

Spoiler

 

The players are still developing nicely and are all regulars in the England squad now. As i alluded to a few posts back, Sancho seems to get a bit hacked off every time Bellingham beats him to an award! Also Bellingham doesn't seem to like the attention, but it doesn't appear to be affecting performances so far.

Spoiler

 

A season of consolidation rather than marked improvement which is fine at this stage, our trio netted exactly the same amount of goals (96) as last season and Bellingham scored 1 more goal but in 3 more games than last season;

• Bellingham scored 66 goals and got 12 assists in 55 games. 
• Sancho was again our main creator with 33 assists and he added 12 goals.
• Dembele notched 17 goals and 15 assists.

Spoiler

 

As i say a season of consolidation but that's no problem for the time being, i would like to increase the goal tally and hopefully that will come further down the line.

Thanks for reading and hope everyone is staying safe out there, wherever you may be in the world.

Edited March 24, 2020 by smoggy90
upload included some of season 2 for some reason, should be ok now

[Rob]

Boom! Another excellent one

[smoggy90]

9 hours ago, Rob said:

Boom! Another excellent one

Thanks rob!

[Kanegan]

Bellingham is really hitting well. Couple of seasons more and he can definitely crack 80's IMO.